EventBrite loses data from Make Faire registrations :(
Dear Eventbrite Customer, I'm writing to let you know that on September 20th, two iPads were stolen from an Eventbrite employee while in transit. These devices were heading back to Eventbrite HQ after being used at Maker Faire New York, an event you registered to attend through Eventbrite. When we found out that the devices were stolen, we immediately notified law enforcement authorities of the situation. We then set up a remote password lock on the devices and initiated a remote data wipe. We also worked quickly to determine what data was stored within the application's database on those specific pieces of hardware.
I am notifying you of this incident because we believe your email address, and, if you elected to share it, first and last name, were on one of the stolen iPads and could potentially be exposed. Eventbrite collected this information so that we could send you PDF tickets and payment receipts, and confirm ticket purchases on-site for those people who didn’t bring a printed ticket.
We know that having your personal data compromised is a violation of the trust you place in Eventbrite, and we offer you our deepest apologies. While we believe the risk for criminal misuse of your email addresses is low, we take your security and privacy seriously and believe that it's best to be open and transparent. We encourage you to monitor your email account closely for suspicious messages and not share financial or sensitive information over email. Please note that Eventbrite will never ask for passwords or credit card numbers over email.
To prevent this from happening again, we have updated our iPad application, Eventbrite At The Door, to encrypt all email addresses collected on-site at events, and we have made changes to all our mobile applications, including our newest version of Easy Entry, so that they will no longer store email addresses collected from online orders on mobile hardware. And on top of these technical fixes, we are putting in place increased security measures for the transportation of company-issued iPads, so that they will no longer store any personally identifiable data while in transit.
I encourage you to write to me with any questions you have about our security procedures. It's something that we take seriously and we take full responsibility for our mistake. You can reach me at kevin.hartz@eventbrite.com or call our support hotline at 866-528-2027.